Books.
Religion: From Place to Placelessness
Yi-Fu Tuan with Photographs by Martha A. Strawn
Distributed for Columbia College Chicago Press
168 pages | 42 color plates, 30 halftones | 7 x 9
What does it mean to be religious in the modern world? This is the question posed by well-known human geographer, Yi-Fu Tuan in Religion: From Place to Placelessness. In this, the latest book in his long and distinguished career, Tuan turns to this specific challenge, which has been a uniting current in much of his previous work. To illustrate the modern meaning of religion, Tuan calls on the work of photographer-artist Martha A. Strawn, whose impressive gallery of photographs from around the world concludes the book.
Across the THRESHOLD of India: Art, Women, and Culture
by Martha A. Strawn
with introductions by Kapila Vatsyayan and Mark H. Sloan, an historical essay by William K. Mahony, and drawings by Jack Colling
Published in association with the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston
An important and strikingly beautiful book about the sacred Hindu practice of threshold drawing.
In the Hindu world-view, threshold is a profoundly important concept that represents a passage between one space and place and another, creating a visual bridge between the secular and the sacred. Accordingly, the literal threshold a person crosses when entering and exiting a home or business symbolizes the threshold one crosses between the physical and spiritual realms of existence.
Alligators, Prehistoric Presence in the American South
by Martha A. Strawn
with essays by LeRoy Overstreet, Jane Gibson, and J. Whitfield Gibbons
Originally published by the Johns Hopkins University Press and now available through George F. Thompson Publishing
For more than 65,000,000 years, the alligator has inhabited the North American continent. One of the few remaining links to the age of the dinosaur, these ancient reptiles move gracefully through the water but are relatively awkward on land (though they can charge aggressively if threatened). In so many ways, the alligator embodies all that is truly wild in the world.